If you are interested in social networks, don’t miss the slick video about Max Schrems’ David and Goliath struggle with Facebook over the way they are treating his personal information. Click on the red “CC” in the lower right-hand corner to see the English subtitles.

The hacktivist group Anonymous has issued a YouTube video in English, Spanish and German announcing plans to destroy the world’s biggest social network, Facebook.
The hackers offer anyone concerned with the spread of personal information on the web to join the cause and “kill Facebook for the sake of your own privacy” in the action that “will go down in history,” setting the date for November 5, 2011.

When Facebook was founded in 2004, it began with a seemingly innocuous mission: to connect friends. Some seven years and 800 million users later, the social network has taken over most aspects of our personal and professional lives, and is fast becoming the dominant communication platform of the future.

If you've avoided Facebook because of their poor behavior as a custodian of personal information, you may wish to keep an eye on Yahoo. This story describes how Facebook and Yahoo are sharing your information to do many of the same things.

Twitter, Facebook and the many other social networks that have emerged are reminding us exactly how small the planet is, and how seemingly mundane or personal issues (where you live, what you feel) have all kinds of ramifications.

A FEW years ago, Facebook was forced to retreat from a new service called Beacon. It tracked what the social network’s users were doing elsewhere on the web—which caused a huge fuss because of the loss of personal privacy. At the time, Facebook promised to make strenuous efforts to better protect people’s information.

Government agencies may be creeping on their own employees by demanding usernames and passwords to social networking sites such as Facebook. Interestingly, this violates Facebook's own terms of service, as Facebook "prohibit(s) anyone from soliciting the login information or accessing an account belonging to someone else" In this writer's opinion, these government agencies would seem to be also violating the federal governments own proposed laws that would prohibit anybody from misrepresenting themselves on the internet.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation gives an overview of the emerging peer-to-peer alternatives to centralized, monopoly-controlled social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and discusses the strengths of the former and weaknesses of the latter.

Want to send me a Facebook message? But you’re not my Facebook friend?

Pay up.

The social network is overhauling its in-house messaging system with a new set of filters that it says will help users reach out and poke each other more effectively; you can see details here. Part of the overhaul: A test that will allow some users to ping people they’re not friends with, if they’re willing to spend a dollar.